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Bangladesh leader visits Rohingya refugees, assures help

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, center, meets with Rohingya Muslims at Kutupalong refugee camp, near the border town of Ukhia, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017. Hasina visited the struggling refugee camp that has absorbed some of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled recent violence in Myanmar, a crisis she said left her speechless. (Saiful Kallol/Associated Press)

UKHIYA, Bangladesh — The Bangladeshi prime minister demanded Tuesday that Myanmar allow the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled recent violence in the Buddhist-majority nation — a crisis she said left her speechless.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh would offer the refugees temporary shelter and aid, but that Myanmar should soon “take their nationals back.”

“We will not tolerate injustice,” she said at a rally at the Kutupalong refugee camp, near the border town of Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar district.

On Monday night, she lambasted Myanmar for “atrocities” that she said had reached a level beyond description, telling lawmakers she had “no words to condemn Myanmar.”

At least 370,000 Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts, prompting Myanmar’s military to retaliate with what it called “clearance operations” to root out the rebels.

The crisis has drawn sharp criticism from around the world. On Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader called the killing of Muslims a political disaster for Myanmar. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also called Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a “brutal woman,” and urged other Muslim countries to “increase political, economic and commercial pressures” on the country to stop the violence.

The U.N. human rights chief said Myanmar’s ethnic Rohingya minority was facing what “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” U.N. rights investigators have been barred from entering the country.

“The Myanmar government should stop pretending that the Rohingya are setting fire to their own homes and laying waste to their own villages,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said Monday in Geneva, calling it a “complete denial of reality.”

Meanwhile, a Rohingya villager in Myanmar said security forces had arrived Monday in the village of Pa Din village, firing guns, setting new fires to homes and driving hundreds of Rohingya to flee.

“People were scared and running out of the village,” the villager said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

Myanmar police disputed that, saying the houses were burned by terrorists they called Bengalis. That term is used derisively by many in Myanmar to describe the Rohingya, who they say migrated illegally from neighboring Bangladesh, though many Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for generations.

Myanmar’s military said that Rohingya villagers helped them arrest six suspected Rohingya insurgents armed with swords and slingshots on Monday. The military commander in chief’s office said Tuesday on its Facebook page that the six alleged insurgents were detained as they entered Ka Nyin Tan village in Maungdaw township.

In Bangladesh, Kutupalong and another pre-existing Rohingya camp were already beyond capacity. Bangladesh has said it would provide 2,000 acres (810 hectares) for a new camp in Cox’s Bazar district to help shelter newly arrived Rohingya. The government was also fingerprinting and registering new arrivals.

Some new arrivals were staying in schools, or huddling in makeshift settlements with no toilets along roadsides and in open fields. Basic resources were scarce, including food, clean water and medical aid.

Aid agencies have been overwhelmed by the influx of Rohingya, many of whom are arriving hungry and traumatized after walking for days through jungles or being packed into rickety wooden boats in search of safety in Bangladesh.

Many tell similar stories — of Myanmar soldiers firing indiscriminately on their villages, burning their homes and warning them to leave or die. Some say they were attacked by Buddhist mobs.

In the last two weeks, the government hospital in Cox’s Bazar has been overwhelmed by Rohingya patients, with 80 arriving with gunshot wounds as well as bad infections.

At least three Rohingya have been wounded in land mine blasts, and dozens have drowned when boats capsized during sea crossings.

Myanmar’s authorities said more than a week ago that some 400 people — mostly Rohingya insurgents — had died in clashes with troops, but it has offered no updated death toll since.

Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination and persecution in Myanmar and are denied citizenship despite centuries-olds roots in the Rakhine region.

Before Aug. 25, Bangladesh had already been housing some 500,000 Rohingya who arrived after bloody anti-Muslim rioting in 2012 or amid earlier persecution drives in Myanmar.